Disaster struck me one day when I was a boy. I don’t know where in the world my little sister came back to the house real dirty and smelly. Some type of dark sticky slimy stinky substance was all over her and she was crying up loud. She had tried to get rid of it by using her dirty hand and as you can imagine, this just aggravated the whole situation. She looked like a hideous monster, sort of. She accidentally feels down into the cow manure pit. It was a whole in the ground in the back garden, where my father put everything that our cow metabolism produced… to become organic fertilizer. And my sister… after a rainy night…
There she was crying and crying.... It became my task (privilege?) to clean up that pup. It was an exceedingly unpleasant task. And I can tell you of several more unpleasant tasks I’ve had in my life of cleaning up things. I even had to change a diaper one time. Only once. That was the day of the cloth diaper.
One day Jesus had a very unpleasant task to do. And, Jesus was sick. He was heart-sick. He knew that in twenty-four hours He would be dead. And, His spirit was heavy. Thirteen men trudged up a dark stairway to an upstairs room. Supper was about to be served. You can read all this in John 13 beginning in verse 2.
Custom dictated that before the meal they would need to have their feet washed. I don’t know why they didn’t wash their hands first, exactly how that fit in, but they wanted to have the feet clean before the meal was eaten. Usually the task of feet cleaning was relegated to a servant, in fact to the lowest slave that you could find. This job was very unpleasant. Do you enjoy smelling a sweaty stinky foot?
ILL. Our apartment in Romania was close to the train station. And one of our distant relatives, Emil, who happens to run a small business two hundred miles from us, discovered how convenient is to have a place to stay for free while he was around shopping for his business, in our area. So from time to time, he stopped by our apartment just before the supper time, to stay for the night, because early in the morning, he suppose to catch the train to go back… So he was knocking at the door after a whole day of work and he made himself comfortable, putting off his shoes. O man… what a stinky smelly feet!... It was a nightmare for us: every time when we spotted him trough the door visor, the joy of life disappeared from our family…
You know that God has place our nose about as far away as he could from our feet. When you kneel to wash someone’s feet, did you ever think that your nose is located at the about as close as it can be to someone’s stinky feet. I know that today everybody here are in the cleanest physical shape possible because we took a shower in the morning and we put on clean socks anyway. But not so in the upper room, up there….
Imagine Jesus, the Creator of this Unvers, the King and the Master, washing 24 of those types of feet! Nobody wanted to lower themselves to perform that low-down chore. In fact, their thinking was not focused on humility but on status at that point.
So, Jesus got up and took the towel from its peg and got the basin from its corner in the room and in silence He knelt before the nearest disciple. He loosened the leather straps and one by one He took each filthy foot in His own hand and began to tenderly wash away all traces of dirt and filth. The same hands that fashioned the galaxies of the Universe now cleansed away all filth and grit. Fingers that formed the foundations of the world were now drying toes. After gently drying each foot, those same hands that would soon have nail holes in both them replaced each sandal and tied the straps back on. Those lips that would soon be black and blue from beating and parched from thirst, smiled in love at each amazed disciple. And those eyes that would soon grow glassy from death on the cross gazed into the depths of their hearts.
Jesus understood full well that in a few short hours all those 24 feet that were so wonderfully cleansed would soon desert Him and run for their life and flee from His presence. Jesus was washing the feet of a bunch of deserters. That’s what He was doing. And He knows it. They don’t know it. Only the feet of John would stay put. I imagine that as Jesus came along and washed the feet of Judas that He had some rare thoughts in His mind. He knew that those feet would soon hang lifeless from a tree in a field of blood. Yet He continued washing. He washed Judas knowing that Judas had future plans to harm Him.
I will tell you today that Jesus is still in the foot-cleansing business. He still wants to cleanse feet. Today He kneels before each of us, not to condemn us but to purify us. That’s what He wanted to do to them. I don’t know where we’ve been. We’ve been out somewhere doing something we ought not to have done. And we’re covered with a stinky smelly substance. And, it’s Jesus’ vocation to remove that from us. As Jesus looks into our face He instantly knows the hidden secrets of sin in our life. All our sins come up before Him in their awful hideousness. We might think that He would skip us, that he would not wash our feet. But not Jesus. He kneels there and washes all our sins away. He kneels there in the form of some other human being to wash away all of your sins. His nail pierced hands cup the water of life and apply it to our filth. We are totally forgiven and totally cleansed.
Jesus washes us knowing that in the future we will be deserters, that we will betray Him. He knows us better than we know ourselves. And He knows that we will fail Him again. And yet He believes in us. Perhaps if He loves us enough we will respond and we will be changed. After the foot washing Jesus challenged the twelve disciples with these words: John 13:14 "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet."
Jesus asks us to go out and find somebody else who is grimy and smelly and dirty, a dirty person, somebody that has wronged us, somebody that has hurt us, and like Him we are to forgive people that we know have future plans to harm us. And what are we supposed to do? We’re supposed to forgive them. As we have been freely forgiven so ought we to forgive.
Later that weekend, perhaps on the long hours of the Sabbath day, I imagine there were eleven hopeless men sitting there staring at the ground. Jesus was dead. As they stared I wonder if they happened to notice their feet? I think so. Did they remember how Jesus had washed their feet? Did they see that those feet were dirty again? Did they remember what Jesus had really done? And did a great truth dawn upon them? Jesus wanted each of them to understand even before He died that they were forgiven. Even though their feet were dirty again, even though they had deserted Him that they were forgiven. Jesus said in John 13:7, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand."
And here is an awesome truth: His forgiveness continued on even after His death. Their feet were still clean even though they had failed Him. Jesus did not hold them guilty for the cross. It was not their responsibility to bear that guilt. He had forgiven ahead of time.
What an awesome thing to know that we have a God that forgives us even before we sin. That’s what He did to the disciples. They were forgiven before they even asked. Mercy had been extended before they could even realize they needed mercy. It’s the same today. Before you sin, Jesus is there. We can’t keep our own feet clean; they’re going to get dirty. But Jesus’ forgiveness is there ahead of us. That’s the kind of a God He is. We can’t keep our feet clean. But Jesus forgives us ahead of time, and gives us power to be a little cleaner as the days go by, a little more like the image of Jesus. And that’s our goal. My goal in life is to be like Jesus. In the meantime I know I’m forgiven. 1 John 1:9 - If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to purify us from all unrighteousness.
All our righteousness is as repulsive to Him as my sister’s “manure experience” was to me. And that day, He not only washed filthy, He washed filthy unholy hearts.
And today, Jesus is standing before us to wash our hearts. And what substance is He going to use? He’s going to use blood, His blood to wash the sin from our heart. What an awesome Savior we have.
We’re going to participate in an Ordinance of Humility that reminds us of how Jesus washed the disciple’s feet and how we also ought to view the grime of our life and the grime of our neighbor. And we ought to participate in washing it away and extending forgiveness because we have been forgiven.
Before we separate let me remind you that we have several areas set up in the back… men, women and couples… When you come back, please don’t sit in these two sections. You can sit in those, but it would be easier if we would not be sitting in these two sections here.
Let us pray before we separate for the Ordinance of Foot-washing (Humility): Dear Father in heaven, thank you for washing the dirty feet of the dirty dozen, the deserters. And I pray today that You would wash not only our feet, but our hearts with Your blood. Dismiss us with a special blessing as we go into the foot-washing service. And bless us as we reassemble here for the ordinance of the cup and the bread. And we pray this in the name of Jesus our Savior, Amen
(Thanks to D.G.)
